Progressives have thoroughly infiltrated the Republican National Committee (and destroyed it) in exactly the same way they infiltrated the DNC. Progressives jammed Willard Romneycare down our throats.

We Ron Paul voters have been warning traditional GOP voters about Willard for six years now, but like Cassandra, we were ignored.

The bad news is that an unsustainable $16 TRILLION national debt, endless printing of dollars out of thin air, and unchecked deficit spending will guarantee an economic collapse at some point during the next four years. The good news is that a (nominal) Republican won’t be blamed for it.

what made the republican party a wreck? Face it – it isn’t hispanics or woman or whatever changing demographic we are obsessing on now – the wreck is the republican philosophy – expressed by the Romney 47% remark and the “never met a war we didn’t love” mentality – the anyone who disagrees with us is a socialist-facist whatever mentality, the refusal to deal factually logically and analytically with reality – as in – the CBO issues a report showing tax cuts for the wealthy do nothing to improve the economy and republicans call to have the report suppressed. Of course – there are the climate change deniers. The attacks on birth control and the extreme characterizations of gays.

But the repubs now have their new meme – it is the changing demographics that lost us the election – not that we have swung far right of sanity to appease a small minority that is our base.

The republicans can “outreach” to hispanics all they want but as long as we have elected republicans supporting the birther nonsense and the obstructionism in congress- it is going to be hard for the republicans to be credible.

Actually, Nate Silver (whom I revere as a fellow aspie nerd made good) rather badly undercalled both the ND and MT Senate races (especially the former; his adjusted poll numbers for MT at Test +1.9% weren’t far off, but the model’s secret sauce “skewed” that far to the right/R side). The polls were off for ND, so I don’t blame him in the least.

I agree that the Silver-hate says far more about the GOP appatchiks than about him.

Obviously the lesson for the Republicans is that they need to double down on their efforts at ideological purity. Purge the RINO’s from their ranks and not be squishy about their beliefs (e. g. more wars for peace, torture is good, borrow and spend)

In the short term they’ll end up a smaller purer party, but in the long term they’ll be completely out of touch with the rest of us.

I think there is another big lesson, if the Republicans are willing to learn it. A large group of Republican and conservative opinion leaders spent the last month telling us that the science of polling is false, and that Mitt Romney was poised for a huge win. Maybe if rank and file Republicans can now accept that these clowns claims that climate science is phony, and economic science is phony, are utter self-serving nonsense. There is certainly some room for debate on these issues, but the scientific community is not totally corrupt or idiotic. If the party decides to deal with the real world on these issues they have a chance to connect with voters.
And in the process that will boost social conservatism too. The biggest problem I feel that social conservatives have is that the politicians who are trying to advance their adgenda show themselves to be on the wrong side of so many issues where real data is available. It is too easy to believe that a person who is wrong about economics (taxes) and wrong about science (climate) is wrong about social issues too.

Actually, the fact that Mitt Romney was able to do as well as he did is pretty amazing given how bad the economy was at the end of GWB’s watch. Obama wins this thing by what is in reality the thinnest of margins even though the electoral count skews this. When you look at this, Obama’s win comes through the marshalling of urbanites in So. Fl, N. VA, and the three big cities in Ohio along with Denver.

What I took away from a purely political and gamesmanship perspective is that Romney was doomed from the start even though he was what “experts” said was exactly what the Republicans needed. The powers inside of the Republican Party thought that Obama was a fluke and that he won because Bush was responsible for the economic tailspin in 2008 ( reality was that both sides were very much complicit) and that after 4 years the Republicans would be so energized that they could take Obama to the woodshed with any candidate. They then decided on Romney who was next man up for them ( they always seem to do that Dole, McCain) and push him forward. The problem was that Romney got caught up in a battle from his right … his far right. He had to deal with “losers” in Santorum and Gingrich who would have made McCain and Dole’s performances look competent. I mean, come on, Santorums own constituents threw him out in favor of a virtual mannequin in Bob Casey and Newt was ethically challenged.

Romney and the Republican power brokers had to sit around until mid-May before they could get a real national campaign up and running against a guy who had the infrastructure in place and a strategy already laid out . By the time the money starts coming into Romney, Obama had already started running millions of dollars in adds in Ohio, PA and FL against him. On top of that Obama’s handlers used targeted issues on Romney like Women’s Rights and abortion/contraception in targeted places like VA and PA and the auto bailout (which was incredibly disingenuous) and Romney’s “opposition” to it in Ohio. The fact that this thing was close tells me that Romney was actually a pretty strong candidate with a weak support system from the national party who should have found a way to get Santorum and Gingrich out last summer and only offer up some token resistance for Mitt during the primaries instead of having to slug it out across Iowa and South Carolina and Florida in the primaries. The loony far right did Romney in as well as a good ground game by Obama

Cosimano, you know Wisconsin voters will support whichever candidate most effectively uses the slogan “Forward.” That alone explains how Walker and Obama won in the same year.

The real lesson is that Romney/Ryan couldn’t even carry his own district, but Ryan did get re-elected to his house seat, which Democrats had prepared to seriously contest this year.

Also about one percent of those who voted for Obama also preferred Tommy Thompson over Tammy Baldwin, OR, more likely, accounted for the increased third-party vote in the senate race.

Voters are ornery individual creatures who do what they want, no matter what the pundits say. Nate Silver’s virtue is in studying what the ARE doing, rather than expounding on what the speaker hopes and prays they will be doing.

The Republican Party should stop pretending that it represents “the people.” It should take stock of itself as a band of political thinkers (or non-thinkers), who are OFFERING something to a vast sea of people who are not particularly loyal to them. Then, figure out what the prospective buyer will actually make an offer for.

As for the Romneyphobic conservatives sounding off in predictable fashion, I for one voted for Ron Paul in the Wisconsin primary, Obama in the general election, and would have been pleased to see an Obama/Paul ticket this year instead of Obama/Biden, although Obama has a touching loyalty to his team.

Ron Paul’s and Gary Johnson’s showing this year had as many causes as there are voters in their respective columns: most of which are not any ideology’s property to count on.

As a Libertarian, I am proud and elated that Gary Johnson got over a million votes in the Presidential election. True Conservatives of the Robert Taft and Barry Goldwater camp helped found the Libertarian Party over 40 years ago. Even though the Libertarian Party is either ignored or marginalized by the Main Stream Republicans,it is now the only hope on the political horizon for restoring Constitutional Liberty in America. In order to achieve and keep political power the Republican Party has not only compromised but sold out to the American Left. The Republican Party,by and large nationally, is nothing but a “me too” conservative socialist “get along to go along” political party without any substantial conservative philosophical roots. They got what they deserved in the recent election. And as to Ron Paul and his supporters,who were screwed by the Republican Party, they can now say a big fat I told you so.

If the GOP is broken, then they do not know it yet. They cannot start rebuilding as a 21st century party until they do. What’s unfortunate for the GOP isn’t that Romney couldn’t lead or heal the broken party- it’s that he was so flawed that he allows conservatives to ignore the brokenness. Many will need another cycle of defeat, this time with an unquestioned diehard, before they can come to terms with it.

Charles., the party that swept the House also lost winnable seats in the Senate in 2010, and again this year. The Tea Party is a niche trend. It plays well here or there, but it does not play well at the state or national level.

Silver missing ND was understandable. The final margin was a mere 3000 votes. But Tester had a slim lead in the MT polling for the last two weeks yet Silver’s model failed to draw the correct conclusions.

By the way, kudos to Berg for not subjecting ND to a tedious, pointless recount.

Things are NOT what they seem….Trust me, when Obama’s name is off the ballot, the Minority vote will return to normal levels. Did you see the crush of Young people, African-Americans, Latino, & Asians come out in such large numbers for the last Democratic Candidate, John Kerry? NO!

It is the Man, Obama who is bringing out these voters. How else do you explain these Minority Voters re-electing a President with such a horrific Economic Record???

Katie, with all due respect, you’re whistling past the graveyard. Even if voter enthusiasm in those demographics does return to more traditional levels in the future, they’re still going to make up an ever larger share of the electorate. (The percentage of the electorate that’s “non-Hispanic white” drops about 2 to 3% every four years.) The Republican Party cannot survive as a national party without at least somewhat improving its candidates’ performance with non-white voters.

“What if the Republicans run Condoleeza Rice and Mia Love in 2016. You think that won’t bring out a high level of black voters?”

I think that badly misstates the problem. The issue isn’t the race of the person on the ticket, the issue is policies and perceptions.
After all, there wasn’t a latino on the Dem ticket, but Romney lost latinos by 50 points (compared to iirc about 20 points when Bush was running). Only someone far removed from the politics of minority groups could think that a black candidate automatically generates a high level of latino support… (Or that Rubio, a Cuban-American, is automatically going to get a lot of support from voters of Mexican or Central American descent).

And there’s another problem- Rice is not pro-life, and is a moderate on other issues. I think she has little chance of surviving a GOP primary given the current attitudes of the base.

Kamron, you may be right, but Katie said “Trust me, when Obama’s name is off the ballot, the Minority vote will return to normal levels.”

If the question (I wouldn’t call it a problem), is NOT the race of the person on the ticket, but policies and perceptions, then all kinds of outcomes are possible. Thus, Katie is wrong.

P.S. While typing this comment, I received a phone call with an automated survey.

1) Did you vote for Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, or did you not vote? Well, I voted for Obama, but what if I voted for Gary Johnson?

2) Are you a liberal, conservative, or moderate. I silently waited for a human being to come on the line, but the robot said, I can’t hear you, are you still there? I tried to press zero, but that wasn’t a valid answer. So I pressed conservative.

3) Are you a Republican, Democrat, or independent? Independent.

So they have one independent conservative vote for Barack Obama. As the pollster in one of my favorite Doonesbury cartoons said, “Man! You’re going to throw off the curve!”

Re: Trust me, when Obama’s name is off the ballot, the Minority vote will return to normal levels.

Wasn’t that supposed to the story this year, since all those people were so terribly disappointed in Obama?

What you are missing is that many of these people turned out as much to vote against the GOP as to vote for Obama. What the GOP is offering is not just something they are not buying, it’s something they very actively reject. Back in 09 some rightwing folk on blogs were telling us “You’ll miss George Bush”. They were right and I do– because Mr Bush, for all his faults, was a better man than what his party has become since.

Katie’s analysis is simply wrong. The next presidential election is four years away. A 22 year old voter who got excited in 2008 will be a 30 year old–maybe married, maybe a homeowner, maybe even a parent. Do you think that 30 year old will be more or less likely to vote than she was in 2008 and 2012? And in 2016 a 65 year old voter will have been born in 1951–solidly in the demographic that upended things in the 1960’s. The Gen-X’er will be hitting their 50’s in the next election cycle–staring retirement in the face. That demographic grew up during the Reagan revolution and has been more likely to accept the low taxes/small government POV.

The reason the Republican party is losing is that the vast majority of average people simply do not accept their worldview that government should be so small that it can be drowned in the bathtub. The American people are not anti-government. They want the Government to do its job: build roads and bridges, mop up after disasters, keep old people from starving in the gutters, provide for the common defense, keep criminals from harming people, and keep the worst depredations of capitalism from interfering with quality of life. They do NOT want the government telling them what they can and can’t do in the bedroom, or that they have to give birth, or that they can’t cut down the annoying tree whose roots keep blocking their sewer lines.

The fights over the social safety net and government provided infrastructure are over. Everybody understands this except for a few activists on the right that have somehow gotten control of the Republican party.